TOBY SHAPSHAK: Facebook flees with 1.5bn users
By taking subscribers out of range of strict EU privacy laws, the social networking firm is back in the spotlight
Just when it seemed Facebook couldn’t blunder into another privacy scandal, it emerged last week that the firm is moving responsibility for 1.5bn of its users from international headquarters in Ireland to California to potentially avoid new European privacy regulations. That’s about three-quarters of Facebook’s 2.2bn monthly active users that will be out of reach of the EU’s new general data protection regulation. This is despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling the US congress this month that Facebook would comply with the "spirit" of the regulations. "We’re still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing," he said, without elaborating. When asked if users could opt out of having their data used for marketing purposes, he tactfully said: "Let me follow up with you on that." Don’t hold your breath. The EU regulation becomes active on May 25, and offending companies can be fined up to 4% of their global turnover, which in Facebook’s case coul...
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